Drano Lake Dive Yields ‘MOTHERLODE’ Of Snagged-up Salmon Gear

Move over, Drano Lake fight video, enter Drano Lake dive video.

A pair of scuba divers filmed themselves gathering the mother of all yard sales’ worth of flashers and other fishing gear at the salmon-rich but snaggy Columbia Gorge backwater.

Chrome flashers, chartreuse flashers, Pro-Trolls, Short Buses, 360s, triangles, along with spinners, spinner blades, Super Baits, cannonball sinkers, rigging components, two nets, a beer koozie, a couple rodholders and a teal sunhat can be seen littering the bottom of the lake.

Old tree trunks stand out in the murk like bizarro Christmas trees, so much gear decorates them.

There’s also a hammer – a murder weapon, certainly, but for nails, salmon or …?

The video shows at least three dead spring Chinook on bottom, while one of the divers cuts loose a northern pikeminnow struggling on a line.

Posted recently on YouTube and TikTok by Vlad Siryk, it caught the eye of anglers on Ifish, who were amazed at the haul.

“J F C … hit the MOTHERLODE,” “Good for these guys to clean up and give some and make some moolah,” “I glad he found my hat” and “I think the owner of Short Bus and VIP sunk those logs there in the off season” were some of the comments and jokes they cracked about the dive into the drowned mouth of the Little White Salmon River.

Indeed, it leaves a far different taste on the popular fishery than the video of early May’s fight on the banks of the lake.

Drano attracts spring and fall salmon returning to a national fish hatchery there or to seek out its cool, glacier-fed waters when the mainstem Columbia is running warm in summer.

So what did Siryk, who describes himself as a spearfisherman and free diver, and pals do with all that gear?

“After absolutely cleaning house and leaving this place a lot cleaner than how we found it, we got back to the dock and we already had some fishing guides waiting for us to either get their favorite flasher back or buy some gear from us,” Siryk narrates.

Three-sixty flashers are currently running $17.99, 3.5-size spinners from $5.49 for a two-pack of blades to $14.99 for a two-pack of lures.

And then, apparently still outfitted with “a lot of people’s lucky flashers, lucky spinner blades, so it was only right to try and redeem ourselves from this morning” downstream at the Wind River, where they’d been skunked earlier and would be again that very windy afternoon, Siryk adds.

“Nonetheless, it was an awesome day. It was a lot of fun,” he states.

Diving snaggy spots for fishing gear is literally the idle daydream of anglers everywhere, but these guys made it a reality, and how. Might be time for another headquarters upgrade, too, what with all the hits and subscribers this video will help rack up!